After some pretty hefty setbacks with its A380 superjumbo
program, Airbus was dealt another blow today by FedEx with the announcement
that the shipping company would cancel its orders for the A380-800F. FedEx has
originally signed on to purchase 10 of the superjumbos, but will
now instead purchase 15 Boeing 777s.

"The decision to purchase Boeing 777s was taken after
Airbus announced significant delays for delivery of A380s. Global package
demand continues to grow and we need the appropriate aircraft to meet that
demand," said Maury Lane, a spokesman at FedEx Express.

FedEx's first batch of four 777s will arrive in 2009 with
eight more coming in 2010. FedEx will take delivery of the remaining aircraft
in 2011 and has taken options to purchase at least 15 more planes. "We are
very pleased to meet the needs of such an important customer," said a
spokesman for Boeing.

When asked to comment on the FedEx announcement, an Airbus
spokesman remarked that the company "regrets FedEx's decision, but we understand
their need to urgently address capacity issues." The spokesman went on to
say "We still expect the A380 freighter to be a successful program from
the outset, although we did not expect demand to be very high at the
start."

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My brother's friend is a pilot who has flown Airbus planes, and he said the fly-by-wire system sucks. You go to bank, and then wait for the aircraft to do something. We were joking about what you would have to do in case of an emergency =) Just push the controls to which ever direction you wanted to go, smoke a cigarette, and hope for the best.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer